


No Return

by illwynd



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Dark, Ficlet, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt No Comfort, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-27
Updated: 2018-08-27
Packaged: 2019-07-03 05:08:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15812031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illwynd/pseuds/illwynd
Summary: Thor deals with the aftermath of loss and choices, when half the universe is gone.





	No Return

Years had passed, and still Thor could not look at himself in the mirror.

So little was left, and so much was gone. It was true, the Valkyrie had shepherded away the few who had been spared from both tragedies, and in the terrible aftermath, in a universe filled with half an aching silence, she and those survivors had found their way back to where Thor stood upon Midgard.

There had been ample room for them there, of course. No quarrel arose at their arrival, their claiming of a bit of cold and barren land in the northern part of the realm, a place where Asgardians had walked long ago. The nations of Earth had been too gripped by despair, by shock. Some troubles had come later—mortals who saw _gods_ and believed they should have been able to stop the slaughter. That they should have been able to _do something._  They came, singly and mad or in pairs or bands, with knives, with guns, with nothing but rage.

Each time Thor had met them alone, allowing none to accompany him.

_We lost as much as you. We could not stop it. We tried. I swear to you, we tried._

Sometimes he simply let them exhaust their anger upon him.

He never raised a hand, except to shield his head, his eye.

_We lost… so much…_

He kept no mirrors in his own chambers now. Only one in his bathing room, by necessity, and he could not walk past it without feeling his steps falter, feeling his heart skip with grief that was overfull still, ready at any moment to spill over, to bring him to his knees.

It would have been simple enough to replace the eye given him by Rocket with one that would match his own color. But he had not.

Sometimes he removed it, when he was alone at night. He stared up at the stars with half his vision dark, gone, dead. The vision in his other eye blurred. The stars swam and shivered.

It would have been simple, also, to let his hair grow out again. By now, left alone, it would have reached past his shoulders. But still it was shorn above his ears, close and strange to his own eye, short enough to let the chill breezes tickle his bare skin.

He remembered what Loki had said of it.

He remembered the things he himself had _not_ said in reply.

Things had not truly been well between them on the ship, after Asgard was gone, before Thanos had come. They had hugged, yes, briefly, before parting again and trying to pretend. It had not fixed Thor’s hurt and distrust. It had not made Loki any easier to live with, either, his peculiar ways grating on Thor’s nerves more than ever before. And Thor had been bitter, stubborn, refusing to give an inch of ground where he thought Loki should bend to him to demonstrate that he was changed.

So he had not brought Loki close to him but instead let him go as he pleased, half certain that his brother would soon be disappearing once more to Norns knew where. He had pushed Loki away to test his theory, to avoid the inevitable disappointment.

Loki had come to him again and again, and Thor could see him squirming with uncertainty, with discomfort. Loki had tried to speak to him, awkwardly, the silver of his tongue gone, leaving halting half-sentences in its place.

Thor had done nothing. Had refused him, in silences and false, flickering smiles.

“Let me restore it for you,” Loki had said out of nowhere one night in the berth Thor had taken, the one he had selected because it was humble and small and had no room for a second bed and thus Loki could not invade it. The space in which he had been ignoring his brother that evening, while Loki tried to share his companionship.

Thor looked up, meeting his eyes for the first time in an hour. “What?”

“Your hair,” Loki gritted out, voice like a rasp. “You can’t have wanted them to do that; I know your vanity too well for you to claim you did. Let me restore it. Let me do that for you. Please.”

For a moment, Thor had ached to let him; he _hadn’t_ wanted it done. It had been a terrible violation, being shorn like a sheep without his consent, and he had hated the look of it when he first saw it, even if he did have to admit it was easier to tend to. But he would not say it, would not give in. Loki still needed to prove so much to him. Thor was not ready to forgive. He had spent years—all his life—forever so quick to let go of a grudge, especially against those he loved. But he could not, not this time.

“No. I find I prefer it this way.”

“But, Thor…”

Thor had shrugged the pleading words away in irritation. “I said _no_. Why do you want to? It’s certainly not truly for my benefit. That would not be like you.”

Thor had not looked at Loki then but he could hear him breathing, could hear the whisper of his clothes as he fidgeted.

“All right,” Loki snapped at last. “Because I hardly recognize you, and I can’t stand it. Is that a reason you’ll believe?”

Thor rolled his eye and went back to paging through the ship’s latest inventory. “Even if I _believe_ it, that does not change my answer.”

Loki had gone silent, had let the matter drop. Had slipped away a few minutes later, leaving Thor in blessed peace and quiet, and he had not mentioned it again.

A month later, Thor watched his brother die, foolishly, futilely, hopelessly. And this time he was able to speak no parting words, no vows of forgiveness. This time he held Loki’s broken body only after he was gone, when it was too late, the vision of Loki’s dying struggles turning everything cold and hollow inside Thor as he clutched that limp form.

A month after that, with Stormbreaker in his hand, Thor had called upon magic and felt the soft strands curling against his neck, just the length it had been before Sakaar.

Then he stared at himself in the mirror, himself as he used to be, himself as if none of it had happened. And, clenching his teeth to hold back tears, within moments he had summoned a blade and cut it all off again, sawing through it in haphazard clumps, uncaring of how it looked, needing nothing more than to have it gone. To have no more reminder of what he’d lost. Of what he had refused when he was granted the opportunity.

He was sweating when he finished. Red-faced, his one true eye rimmed in red as well. Breaths choked in his throat, heart racing from the ache. Piles of blond at his feet, all in a mess. One lock still clenched tightly in his fist, because he had nothing else on which to hold.

He had done that again and again. Each time it began to grow out, when he would begin to notice its length brushing his bare shoulders when he dressed in the cold hours before dawn. Each time he realized that months had passed and the slow process of rebuilding was trudging along and everything that had happened was fading into memory.

Each time, Thor cut his hair again, and waited for nightfall only to stare up trembling at a half-darkened sky.

Or sometimes wandered out into the empty fields of Midgard, frost upon the ground, to meet the mortals come to take out their rage upon the gods for their fallen kin. Thor let them expend their vengeance upon him, for all the good it did.

So much was gone. So much was gone and could not be restored.

Second chances most of all.


End file.
